Brand names that your nation pronounces wrong

32 comments

1. Haven’t really heard people pronounce Leroy Merlin in the American and not French way, unless ironically.

   And guessing the reason why we pronounce Škoda without the š might be that *szkoda* in Polish means literally *harm*/*pity*.

2. We pronounce Škoda here in Slovenia. I never heard od Skoda haha.

3. We should say Ś*koda* this is so cute omg ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

4. Lidl uses its proper German pronunciation (“leedle”) in its advertising in Ireland but most people pronounce it “liddle”.

   Lidl UK just gave up and use “liddle” in their ads. I think it’s hard to look at that word if you’re an English speaker and not think it rhymes with ‘middle’.

5. All of them, Balkans is famous for mispronounced western names LOL.

6. The word “Shkoda” means pity or damage in Ukrainian lol.

7. one per country that irritates me most:

   – Poland: Leroy Merlin was mentioned so i will go with another french brand – [Peugeot](https://voca.ro/11sLDdqgixIA)

   – Ireland: IKEA

   /edit: in general french brand names are borderline unpronounceable for polish people. French people will be in terror hearing what and how many ingenious ways polish people can mispronounce them. In case of Leroy Merlin ton of people simply give up

8. [Circle K.](https://i1.kwejk.pl/k/obrazki/2017/10/b4a1899417fba2aacfe01497f7f93ba8.jpg)

   Auchan is bad pronounced as “oshon” everywhere, in commercials an self-service cashes, instead of “oshan”.

   Carrefour as “kerfur” instead of “karfur”.

   And what about T-Mobile? We use English pronounciation despite network is German, how is it pronounced in Germany?

9. We say “Eskoda” as is tradition with all words that start with an S and are followed by a consonant😂

10. Renault is pronounced “renolt” in Czech.

    And don’t get me started on coffees… (kapučo, preso,…)

11. Which one do we pronounce right in Spain would be the better question? And the answer is IKEA because it is pronounced exactly the same in Swedish and in Spanish.

12. Czech people pronounce Nike as naik (rhymes with bike) instead of nay-kee

13. IKEA – eye key ah

14. Great post but you forgot to explain how Skoda is pronounced if its not a regular S. Is it a sj sound or something?
    .

    Regards a non slav

15. I mean it is Szkoda which is also a word in Polish and means the same thing.

16. Braun is an interesting one, because being German it, of course, means and [sounds like “Brown”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB2YWfzxCBg).

    But in English they’ve always told us [they’re “brawn” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMqPrp9nmro)- latching on the being strong.

    These days they’re not consistent. when I Googled I saw ads sounding ‘brawn’ but I know I’ve seen English ads that have gone to ‘brown’.

17. Germany: Este Lauder, Nestle, Sandoz

18. Huawei, Xiaomi for sure.

    Levy’s as Lay-vis

    Probably a lot of English names are pronounced wrong

19. I get a headache when Americans try to pronounce Porsche

20. We say “Nike” /Nike/ instead of /Nikee/

    BMW is /bé èm double vé/ instead of /bé èm vé/

    Bluetooth is /bluetoo/ as we can’t pronounce “th”

    WiFi is /weefee/ because why not (it’s wireless fidelity anyway, so only half wrong)

    But Ikea is the Swedish way!

    EDIT: and obviously everything with a number in it, we don’t say “Tesla Model Three” or “Ferrari F quaranta” (although close) or “Porsche neun elf”.

21. Pronouncing things differently from their original language is not *wrong* in any way; every language has its own phonology to begin with. Some random car brands commonly pronounced differently in Swedish include:

    *Škoda* with an S (typically also spelled with one). It’s a homophone of *skåda* (to “behold”)

    *Hyundai* is commonly as “Honda” with an added [j] (~English “y”) at the end.

    *Mazda* with just an S, no T or U.

22. This isn’t just malta but everyone pronounces SHEIN as “shane”. It’s “she” + “in”.

23. >the letter “š” is used mostly in diminutives and it sounds like something silly and cute

    Wat?

    In Polish television Škoda commercials have English slogan “Simply clever” with pronounciation “Skoda”, so it came from the west.

24. We tend to pronounce Adidas like “a-DI-das”.

25. Basically everything because we pronounce like they’re written and like to add vowels.

    BMW = Bemari

    Mercedes = Mersu / Mese

    Ford = foordi / foortti / voortti

    Peugeot = Pösö

    Chrysler = Rysleri (generally anything with ”chr” or ”tr” and such will be just an ”r” to make it easier)

    Couldn’t come up with anything but car brands lol

26. In Greece we say Nike (the brand) without the e sound you hear in the US. Naik? I don’t know how to romanize the sound.

    But it kind of annoys me since the Greek word for victory is Νίκη which sounds more like how the brand is said in the US and is also what word it was based off of to begin with.

27. One of the funniest is pronouncing Maldon (Sea Salt) as if it was some fancy French or Italian word.

28. TIL Leroy Merlin is French. I always pronounced it like it were English.

29. We pronounce all the brands correctly. It is not our fault that they can’t say the brand names correctly in their native countries.

30. Hmm… Probably loads, but the ones I can think of right now are “Nike” (we pronounce it like “Mike”, which is apparently wrong), Skoda (with the regular s), Peugeot (we pronounce the “eu” like the Norwegian y instead of the more correct ø, but otherwise it’s quite decent).

31. [Tupperware is pronounced like *toop-per-vah-reh*.](https://youtu.be/A6PBdNklAJk?t=12) It makes my skin crawl.

32. Dr. Oetker.

    Up until about 10-15 years ago even the commercials said it with the Dutch “oe” (comparable to English “oo”). Then all of a sudden they began saying Doctor Uh-tker.

    Which of course is closer to the German way of saying it, but most people refuse to say it like that